Based on the true story of one of the most vocal and powerful asylum campaigns to catch the imagination of the media and inspire a community to unite behind its residents; The Glasgow Girls is a new life-affirming musical for a multi-cultural Scotland still in transition.
Seven teenagers with a cause. Read more …
A protest that captured the imagination of a country.
Scotland 2005. A family is ripped from their home in a high rise flat in Scotstoun, Glasgow and driven away in the middle of the night to be deported.
Driven by a fierce sense of injustice, a group of seven teenage girls in a high school in Glasgow fight for the life of their friend and for the rights of children of asylum-seekers in Scotland. They take on the Scottish Government and the Home Office and succeed where adults and politicians failed.
If it's real Girl Power you're after, forget the Spice Girls, and revel instead in this uplifting celebration of the indomitable spirit of the Glasgow Girls, and their fight for justice and equality.
The writer and director of Glasgow Girls have hit on something involving and immediate. And it is this reaction that ultimately feels most rewarding.
The kind of explosion of great popular theatre that every city and every nation needs, from time to time, to remind it of what it is, and what it might become.
Glasgow Girls undoes the spin and biases which surround the issue of asylum, smoothing them into a pleasing love letter to our great city, the communities who built it and the new faces who will continue to help it grow.
Seems destined to be remembered as a landmark show in Scottish theatre.
There’s enough energy in Cora Bissett’s new musical for the National of Scotland to launch it in to the stratosphere, but elements of the production are holding it back.
There can be little doubt that Bissett and co have created a significant milestone in Scottish musical theatre.
An irresistible tribute to the power of friendship and community while also packing a fearless political punch.
We are moved by the truth of the real-life story, the thrill of political engagement and, in a production conceived and directed by Cora Bissett, who also contributes several songs, the infectious girl-power feistiness of her young company.
I doubt there's a greater compliment I can pay "Glasgow Girls" other than to say that at times it threatens to finally be the National Theatre of Scotland's 'next Black Watch'.
At times, however, it felt like the production was becoming predictable, failing with its message where other politically fuelled musicals, such as Billy Elliott, got it right – its need to show itself as intellectual and hard-hitting often took over when it wasn’t needed. However, the varying score and choreography maintains the attention of its audience carrying them through the lower points of an overall excellent production.
Genuinely moving and inspiring. Utterly unmissable.
'Glasgow Girls a show for our times'
Glasgow Girls: Feature
Cora Bisset on Glasgow Girls: the Musical
Feature: Glasgow Girls preview
photo by Simon MurphyCitizens' Theatre, Glasgow from Thursday February 20, 2014, until Saturday March 8, 2014. More info: www.citz.co.uk
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